Esther Ferrer has been doing performances since 1967, seeing them as: “A basic art, anchored in reality, not allowing for too much stylistic elaboration.” The image, taken by photographer Roberto Masotti, documents an action Ferrer performed with Zaj group colleagues Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti, as part of the collective happening El tren de John Cage (A la búsqueda del silencio perdido) (John Cage’s Train [Looking for the Lost Silence]). The event was organised by the composer John Cage and ran for three days (the 26th, 27th and 28th of June 1978) in Bologna, Italy. On a train, which had a different destination each day, passengers took part in a series of sound actions and performances connected to the concept of Cage’s Musicircus. Esther Ferrer’s intervention in one of the carriages was to fill the space with threads. The trail left by her performance created a spatial installation that involved the participating audience: the route that the threads marked out was connected to time and the way it is represented, and brought a visual element to Cage’s speculative proposal on sound and silence, which was added to by the sounds recorded on each of the three journeys.